First Fire! Part Two

That night, short-handed, Dan motioned us over. He asked if we could drive Tanker Two to the hydrant, fill it with water and return it to the station.

I said, “Sure.” I mean, how hard could that be compared to…

all the lifting and struggling we’d been doing?

Dan jumped into his truck, an old Chevy Blazer and took off leaving Laurie, her hands on her hips staring between me and the gray 1975 Ford tanker named, “The Whale.”

It was then that it dawned on me that I had no clue about what to do next. ​

Guessing Game

Being unfailingly optimistic about my mechanical skills, I got into the truck and—unbelievably—it started! I endured a couple of minutes of it bucking like a horse in second gear and then we slowly made our way towards the hydrant location, about half a mile away, with Laurie following a safe distance behind in our car.

The tanker lurched forward at about 10 miles an hour and weaved all over the road as I tried to figure out how to shift gears. But we made it to the hydrant and that’s where our real problems began: we had no idea how the hydrant attached to the hose or how that attached to the tanker. We had apparently missed that training.

So we improvised.

A crucial piece of information here that I hadn’t fully grasped yet: fire departments flowed water under high pressure. A 1 3/4” diameter hose line with 120 pounds of pressure per square inch is more like a really pissed off boa constrictor than a hose. Lose control of it and it whips around trying mightily to do damage to anything in its reach.

I knew from some training or another that it was important to hold on, but that had been in a lecture, not something that I had directly experienced. Again, I was optimistic about my mechanical skills and I thought, “this is simple.” What I didn’t understand was that the line from the hydrant — a big 3” line — was supposed to attach securely to the intake valve of the tanker. (There are two kinds of valves on engines and tankers: the intake valves that receive water into the apparatus, and discharge valves that “discharge” water, ideally towards a fire). Not understanding this basic plumbing, I looked at the top of the tanker and saw to my delight what looked like a big hinged manhole cover. Clearly, it seemed to me, this was where the hose went.

“Duh,” I thought to myself, while pointing it out to Laurie.

Confidently, I took the 3” line, climbed to the top of the tanker and stuck it in the manhole. Then I signaled to Laurie to crank open the hydrant.

A Turn for the Worse

At that point, it all went terribly wrong. At even only 80 PSI, the 3” hose’s first reaction was to come flying out of the tanker like a launched missile.

Finally sensing disaster, I grabbed the line before it flew off into the night. I had my arms and legs wrapped around it and I was yelling to Laurie, “Mother of God, turn it off!!!”

“What?” she yelled back over the din of water shooting everywhere.

I nearly went airborne for a second and yelled again, “Turn . . . it. . . OFF!!!!!”

At that precise moment, Dan drove up. He was presented with a married couple, the husband, who he didn’t know that well, on top of his tanker, trying desperately to control the uncontrollable 3” charged line. At the hydrant was the wife, laughing hysterically and yelling, “What? How do you turn it off?”

Dan got out of his truck, cranked the hydrant closed, pointed to the correct intake valve, got back in his truck, shaking his head and drove away. We never spoke of it again.

Laurie and I ultimately figured it out and we filled the tanker. I drove slowly—lurching, staying in second gear—back to the station where I parked it, thanking the heavens for the rule that probationary members were not allowed to back vehicles into the bays. We walked in and no one said a word about the fact that we were both soaking wet. The Assistant Chief, Paul Kelly, just noted on the form that we had responded and waved us off to our car.

Seeing a Fire for the first time changes how you think about the world.

Seeing a Fire for the first time changes how you think about the world.

As people, we generally don’t intend to be arrogant. But one of the unfortunate side effects of thinking ourselves civilized and scientific is arrogance. We think we’re in control. And of course, we’re not.

When you first see the dragon devour a house, in that chaotic and monstrous way, you realize we are not in control. A house goes from a home to ashes in minutes.

Driving back to our home that night, having seen the power and callousness of the dragon, we both better understood that even on our lovely green and blue planet, there are forces oblivious to us and our civilized ways. Fire is just one.